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Fancy learning Italian? Whether you are going to Italy for your holidays or you have decided to learn this beautiful, musical and colourful language, let’s start with our Beginners course. Practical conversation is included from our first class and, during our lessons, we will learn how to introduce ourselves, place an order at the restaurant, ask for information and more. Grammar is immediately implemented in practical and useful conversational tasks, but it will also give you good foundations if you decide to progress with your Italian and join the next course. Booking your place is essential, but remember that this course is for a small group in order to allow students to fully participate and get the best learning experience. Therefore, I would recommend that you book as soon as possible by email (carolina@italiancork.com) or by text (087 9588375) ONLY 2 PLACES LEFT!!

Course details

Starting date: Monday 10th of September

Last lesson: 3rd December

Time: 6.30-8.00 pm

Number of lessons: 12

Max number of students: 10

Location: Blackrock (parking available), 202, 215, 219 bus route

Price: €120

There won’t be a lesson on Monday the 29th of October as it is Bank Holiday week end.

NB: Students who miss class will receive an email with the course material, summary of what was covered and audio files/video (if used during lesson) so that they won’t fall behind.

Fancy learning Italian? Whether you are going to Italy for your holidays or you have decided to learn this beautiful, musical and colourful language, let’s start with our Beginners course. Practical conversation is included from our first class and, during our lessons, we will learn how to introduce ourselves, place an order at the restaurant, ask for information and more. Grammar is immediately implemented in practical and useful conversational tasks, but it will also give you good foundations if you decide to progress with your Italian and join the next course. Booking your place is essential, but remember that this course is for a small group in order to allow students to fully participate and get the best learning experience. Therefore, I would recommend that you book as soon as possible by email (carolina@italiancork.com) or by text (087 9588375).

Course details

Starting date: 9th of July

Last lesson: 3rd of September

Time: 6.30-8.30 pm

Number of lessons: 8

Max number of students: 10

Location: Blackrock

Price: €120

NB: Students who miss class will receive an email with the course material, summary of what was covered and audio files/video (if used during lesson) so that they won’t fall behind.

There won’t be a lesson on Monday the 6th of August as it is Bank Holiday week end.

Fancy learning Italian? Whether you are going to Italy for your holidays or you have decided to learn this beautiful, musical and colourful language, let’s start with our Beginners course. Practical conversation is included from our first class and, during our lessons, we will learn how to introduce ourselves, place an order at the restaurant, ask for information and more. Grammar is immediately implemented in practical and useful conversational tasks, but it will also give you good foundations if you decide to progress with your Italian and join the next course. Booking your place is essential, but remember that this course is for a small group in order to allow students to fully participate and get the best learning experience. Therefore, I would recommend that you book as soon as possible by email (carolina@italiancork.com) or by text (087 9588375).

We’ve worked hard all Winter and Spring studying grammar rules, learning new vocabulary and idioms. We did dedicate some time to our conversational skills, but we all know we need more of it, especially now that we want to go to Italy.

Fluency Classes could be called Conversation Classes, but this definition might lead to a bit of a confusion. In fact, these are not places where we go for a chat. Fluency Classes’ purpose is to develop our fluency and accuracy. In order to ensure the full participation of all students we never take more than nine students.

For Upper Beginners and Pre-Intermediate (livello 1 and 2), new vocab, idioms and interchangeable chunks of sentences will be introduced through videos and examples. These will be contextualized in a real life situation, so that students can immediately see the usefulness and cement their understanding. The second part of the lesson, consists of one or more conversational based tasks practiced in pairs or groups. The tasks include real life situations role playing, descriptions and interviews. These tasks are great fun and enjoyment is a key element in the learning process (to read more on this read my blog post on this link)

During our work, students will be provided timely, but not pedantic feedback. At the end of the lesson we will highlight the newly learned expressions, vocab and common mistakes we have to work on for the next session.

For other levels, vocab, new idioms and expressions are introduced through games, songs or films. They will be used during our conversational tasks and through games they are memorized. The higher the level the more demanding films, songs and conversational tasks will be.

The use of Italian only is recommended as we know that we think in the language we speak and if a student starts asking questions in English, the whole group have to switch their thinking into English. We all know that we can ask the meaning of what we didn’t understand by saying, for example ‘Cosa significa acqua?’ and the other student can say ‘Acqua significa water’. If we don’t know how to say something in Italian, we can simply say ‘Come si dice I’d like some water?’ the other student or the teacher will answer ‘Si dice: vorrei dell’acqua’. In this way we can still get the info we need, but we pass through Italian… and at the end of our lesson we’ll sound more Italian and our confidence in our Italian will be much higher than when we started… and we’ll also have had fun! Grazie a tutti!

To know more about upcoming classes you can email carolina@italiancork.com

Are you just back from your beautiful Italian holidays and you’d like to speak this melodic language? Or do you speak Italian fluently or almost and you’d like to perfect your skills? We are about to start 4 new Italian courses in the College of Commerce, a class to suit every level from Beginners all the way up to Advanced. To know more you can visit www.italiancork.com/college-of-commerce-classes/

Idioms (modi di dire in italiano) are essential parts of any language. They are ingrained in people’s history, culture and life and they reflect the way we perceive and express reality through our language. They are not essential, but they really make a difference in the way you master a language and how integrated you feel in the country you are living. When I first came to Ireland, eight years ago, I could barely survive with my English, idioms where the last of my problems. As my English improved I studied and got accustomed to several idioms… not all of them, of course! With an idiom we say things, we hint things and we understand things in a more immediate way without need of as many words.

Here in this section, we’ll see a few Italian ‘modi di dire’ … but, remember, they will never finish!

This is very funny. Many of you know that we have the verbo piantare which means to plant. La is an object pronoun and stands for it. So, literally, it means: plant it! We actually use it when someone is annoying us (ci dà fastidio) and after a few warnings (smettila, lasciami in pace and so on) we raised our voice and we say Piantala!

We can also say: Vuoi piantarla?

In English you’d just say: stop it!

So, now you know… when an Italian person is annoying you… just go for Piantala!